"During the party scene, Jameson has an encounter with businessman Roderick Kingsley, who offers his advice on how to reinvigorate the failing Daily Bugle. Kingsley says, 'Sell the majority of your shares to the public!' (That, of course, is what Ron Perelman had done with Marvel in 1991, and what is believed by many experts to be what ultimately led to the company going bankrupt in 1996.) Jameson replies, 'I'd never take the Bugle public, Kingsley-because I know that its long-term integrity would suffer under corporate connivers like you, who dream up ridiculous little 'schemes' which only produce short-term gains!' Yep, that pretty sums up what was going on at Marvel. If only J. Jonah Jameson could have been our owner…"

"[Richard] Garriott's dislike of EA founder Trip Hawkins is legendary for long-time Ultima fans. Potshots at EA begin as early as Ultima II, and Ultima V's Apple II version recognized 'electronic arts' as a curse word, with NPCs chastising you for using it in conversation. In Ultima VI, players can stumble onto the grave of 'Captain Hawkins', a pirate whose epitaph reads 'Here lies Captain Hawkins. He died a hard death and he deserved it', and whose cruel and destructive deeds form a minor part of the backstory of several quests and NPCs in the game, including other pirates also named after prominent EA employees. Even in Ultima VII, stabs at EA come in the form of major Fellowship leaders Elizabeth and Abraham, three artifacts that must be destroyed in the endgame being shaped like a cube, sphere and pyramid (the components of the old Electronic Arts logo), and the Guardian himself being described as the 'Destroyer of Worlds' (Origin Systems' company motto at the time was 'We Create Worlds'). Fan theory regards The Guardian as an analogue for Trip Hawkins, due to his urge to acquire and then destroy once he gets bored with his toys."

"It's fairly clear that after he had that huge #1 hit with 'Convoy', his record company was applying severe pressure to Mr. McCall to repeat the success with another hit about CB. He wisely refused; his followup album, Wilderness, had him posing on the album cover looking like John Denver and did not include one single song about truck drivers or CB radio. Major faux-pas as far as MGM Records was concerned - they wanted a sequel to 'Convoy' and they wanted it now. 'You want a sequel to 'Convoy'? You got it!'. (Heh heh, I'll show 'em). Mr. McCall then set out to deliberately jump the shark on his fourth album, the way over the top Rubber Duck featuring 'Ratchetjaw' (a bunch of CB radio talk that sounds like a self-parody of his earlier CB novelty songs) and 'Round the World with the Rubber Duck' (which went beyond mere self-parody, it was C.W. McCall methodically and deliberately Jumping The Shark, right down to the pirate-inspired 'yo ho ho'isms and the backing 'dumb, dumb, dumb, this is dumb, dumb, dumb' background chorus.)"

"Bidmead copes admirably with the Nathan-Turner hell brief — certainly better than anyone not named Robert Holmes ever did. (That he was coping is evident in the anecdote that he picked the name and setting of the story based on remembering a pair of Escher prints hanging in someone’s office that Nathan-Turner hated. The reasons Nathan-Turner hated them [were] that he believed that 'art should exist to soothe, not distract.' If I had to reduce my objection to Nathan-Turner to a single fact, incidentally, that would be it.)"

"Once upon a time, there was an institution built around excitement and adventure. Weird and wacky individuals would wander around the galaxy and entertain millions with their unique talents and bold ideas. It developed its own following and its own fanbase. Some people even dared to call it 'the greatest show in the galaxy.' Eventually, however, there came pressure to conform; to settle down; to sell out. The hippie ideals of the sixties were cast aside like the shell of a brightly coloured party bus, as the show settled for middle-brow entertainment in the middle of a rocky grey quarry.

Where once the show had drawn massive crowds, now the rafters were empty. Various stunts were attempted to draw new attendees or to appease those audience members who had been there since the very beginning. The few people who did watch were less-and-less amused or entertained by what they had seen...A middle-class family sit up in the rafters munching on popcorn and telling each other to shut up and watch. They offer the ratings that determine whether the show lives or dies. It becomes a dark metaphor for the state of the show in the John Nathan-Turner era, as it offers what ever sacrifices are necessary to keep those viewers watching, and to appease the angry gods sitting at the BBC head office. Don’t try anything too ambitious or controversial. Just keep them entertained."

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